Many industrial, manufacturing and food processing operations utilize water for the purposes of cleaning or cooling the equipment employed and products produced by these operations. While attempts may be made to clean the water before it is released into the environment, many contaminants such as oils, organic compounds and/or dissolved metals remain. Historical methods of treatment have included the use of solid materials such as clay and activated charcoal for use as adsorbants of these contaminants.
Other treatment programs have been developed over the years but they contain undesirable side-effects. Compounds such as aluminum sulfate and ferric chloride have exhibited some degree of success in removing certain types of water-borne contaminants.
However, they are acidic and, as a result, are corrosive to the metallic surfaces in contact with this water system. Additionally, water soluble aluminum is regarded as a health threat to both animals and man. Therefore, its presence in any aqueous system which is released into the environment is undesirable. This is also a critical issue in food processing operations in which recovery processes are utilized to generate animal food supplements such as proteins and animal fats.
Effective wastewater treatment programs exhibiting minimal side-effects involve the use of magnesium silicate. This compound is added to the water system to be treated as a powdered solid or as a crystalline mineral variation thereof, such as talc or asbestos. Although magnesium silicate may be desirable from the perspective of efficacy and having minimal side-effects, conventional methods of handling the compound create additional problems. The necessity of having to handle the powders often results in the generation of unwanted dust contamination. Feeding powders into the water system to be treated often causes arcing or bridging in the funnel feeders as well as powder caking, a poorly dispersed mass of compound, which can abrade or plug up piping, valves and other equipment systems.
It is an object of the present invention to provide an effective wastewater treatment program which avoids the use of toxic substances. It is a further object to provide an effective magnesium silicate program without having the undesirable consequences of consequences of having to deal with a powder or fine crystalline compound.